The explosive growth in the amount of information that is generated each day has brought with it a great need to manage that information. In particular, content stored in electronic form or content intended to be delivered electronically, whether in the form of news reports, corporate information, stock quotations, academic publications, or entertainment, needs to be managed so that it can be found easily and delivered to a consumer in a format that is comprehensible to that consumer. The Internet has made it easier to produce content by making an audience available to people who normally would not have published their work widely, by making content available as a starting point for the generation of additional content, and by making information (such as stock quotes, news, and weather) easily available to automatic content generators and aggregators.
The Internet has also made it easier for a consumer to acquire content, particularly through the Internet by using a now-ubiquitous web browser. The amount of content available to a single consumer over the Internet is many times what the consumer could access at a library or a bookstore. In addition, the content comes in many forms, whether written, graphical, or multimedia. Various searching tools also help the consumer find desired content.
Although many tools exist to create and review information, the ability to manage large amounts of information in a manner that permits someone to access and publish the information effectively and flexibly is limited.